The Blogging Community at Chelsea Green

This is day 6 or 7 of the hungerstrike. I dont know which. I just came back from a Stop Blackwater Conference in Stockton, Illinois and i did ok dragging my suitcase up 3 or 4 ramps and i stayed awake during the conference. i think i rated pretty good. I was freezing but that was because the weather was freezing and had nothing to do with the hungerstrike. I have an interesting story to tell about hungerfasts and airports. Back in the ’90s I did a hungerfast against Dupont and traveled all over the country tracking Dupont chemical companies to press my point. It was very tiring and around 31 days it ended. Thank goodness. i think i can truthfully say that was the only hungerstrike where I actually felt like I might die. That feeling was a shocker and it made me realize what the Belfast prisoners on their hungerstrike must have felt because 8 men died. It is one thing to do a hunger strike knowing it will end in 40 days but it is quite another knowing you will fast until you die. As Ive said before, a hungerfast is a very mental thing.

Speaking of mental and hungerstrikes and those airports. After my 31 days of fasting against Dupont (by the way, Dupont considered my hunger fast an act of terrorism. their words not mine) I had to climb on a plane outside of Washington DC and fly to Houston, Texas. I needed someone to go with me to the ticketing counter because I couldnt understand compound sentences. You know, two sentences with an ‘and’ between them. It was too much information and my poor brain could not compute. Finally, I made it to the plane and was fixing to store my suitcase in the luggage compartment when I stood transfixed with the word ” PUSH” on the overhead compartment. PUSH? PUSH? What was push?

When I talk about my reasons for going on a long hunger fast, people often look at me like I’m crazy and I’m reluctant to correct them because fasts are difficult to explain. But I will explain, again. Read More..

Being pregnant in a Texas lock up can be hell. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the practice of shackling women during childbirth and recovery is still done in some Texas jails even though the United States Bureau of Prisons has banned the practice. Texas jails are able to use restraints on women as a […] Read More..

I have been transferred three times. The first cell (a 20 x 150 ft. cinder block) had 9 women inmates and they all slept on bottom metal bunks but kept their ‘stuff’ on the top bunk. That was their shelf. They didn’t want nobody up there. Especially a new cell mate. They told me I […] Read More..